Scum of the Universe

by Everett, Grant

  “Sit.” Ms Humple snapped, not needing to look away from the board.

  Immediately sitting at the closest desk – which had been extensively damaged with lasertip pen graffiti and plastered with what appeared to be a hundred different shades of chewing gun - Tuesday looked around at his fellow students. To his left was a hairless cross-eyed fat kid with permanent hiccups, and just on the other side of the chrome-dome sat a set of identical triplets. Tuesday did a double-take when he realised all three of them had been born without heads. It must be noted that all three of the Menendez brothers lived relatively full lives thanks to modern medical science, and could leave Tuesday for dead in any subject.

  In the opposite direction there was only a brain in a pink glass jar with little holographic butterfly stickers scattered all over it, and a name tag just below her hippocampus declared “Hi! I’m Tiff!” After staring at the bizarre sight for a couple of seconds, a Liquid-Organic Display screen floated up and tilted itself towards Tuesday’s face. Six words appeared on it.

  What are you looking at, dickhead?

  Tuesday felt unsettled by this petting zoo of freaks, and decided to focus on the teacher instead. His eyes closely followed Ms Humple's squeaking chalk as she wrote her name on the blackboard in the universal tongue known as Unglish, an ungodly mess of a language that had developed organically during the dark era that The Scandinavian Expansion had successfully occupied Amerika, England and Australia for most of the late 21st and early 22nd Centuries. Ms Humple followed her name with a list of more complicated words that Tuesday didn’t recognise. Although he’d been verbally mangling Unglish his whole life, Tuesday had never quite understood how to convert all those squiggles into sounds. As far as he could tell, something at the midway point didn’t seem to work. It was as though there was something fundamental missing in his brain.

  While Ms Humple continued to scratch away at her chalkboard the bald fat kid unwisely decided to leer moronically in Tuesday’s direction.

  “How many serves of vegetables do you eat a day?” Pugsley whispered in mockery, proving yet again that the locals of Seven Suns had no concept of how insults were meant to work. “Four?”

  Tuesday glanced at the kid and shrugged.

  “None.”

  Fatty Smoothskull looked confused.

  “I don’t…I don’t get it.”

  Tuesday sighed.

  “I don’t eat vegetables. Ever.”

  The kid was taken aback. It took him a moment to recover from hearing such an inexplicable concept.

  “Um, I understand the individual words you’re using, but the way you’re arranging them literally makes no sense.” He smiled slowly. “So I’m guessing you don’t breathe air, either?”

  Tuesday gritted his teeth and ignored the little spug.

  “How old are you?” the kid continued.

  “Twenty-one, but it's hard to tell with the sun rising every three minutes.” Tuesday snapped, trying to keep his voice below “busted” level.

  Uncle Fester’s ugly nephew blinked his crossed eyes.

  “Uh?”

  “I’m twenty-one.”

  “Oh,” Fatty smirked at the triplets, who would have regarded him with distaste if they possessed the necessary senses to detect he was even there, and made another sad attempt to embarrass Tuesday. “You're old!”

  Tuesday’s eyes flashed in anger and he hissed abuse through his brown teeth.

  “And your entire family tree is a circle, you porky little inbred hick. You could have an entire family reunion sitting in a room all by yourself.” Tuesday growled. “Go give your sister a Father’s Day card, and then I’ll see you after class every day for the rest of your life, you round little spug bastard.”

  The kid went purple and glared in two directions at once, but didn’t say anything else. It was for the best that he gave up on this contest, as Tuesday wouldn’t hesitate to fight a kid. After all, they were more fun to hit than adults, as adults had the habit of hitting back much, much harder.

  “Tuesday!” Ms Humple barked, busting him.

  Tuesday sat bolt upright. “What?”

  “Quiet during my lessons! You can make friends later.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “You heard me!” Ms Humple screeched.

  Tuesday managed not to fall off his chair. Nobody had ever managed to make him shut him up so easily. He held up both hands in a placating way.

  “Sorry.”

  “QUIET!”

  Tuesday opened his mouth and formed a word, but didn’t have a chance to push it off his yellow tongue before Ms Humple clapped. Just like back at the AutoEducation classroom, it was as though a fork of lightning had struck the roof. The fat bald kid assumed an expression of total agony at the unbearable noise and screwed his face up like an Egyptian hieroglyphic, but the triplets and Tiff had no apparent reaction. Tuesday’s ears hummed like mad for the next minute.

  Nobody spoke out of turn again.

  Ms Humple eventually turned away from the monochrome slab. She wore a brittle smile.

  “Welcome to your first day at Elementary,” Ms Humple said severely, panning her eyes from face to face to neck stumps to glass jar. “As you have all tested positive for the Raffle Gene, this means that you are severely allergic to AutoEducation and cannot undergo what is meant to be a basic right of every citizen born on Seven Suns. Even though no carrier of the Raffle Gene has ever accomplished anything worthwhile and you’ll all be chemically neutered before you have a chance to breed and pass on your shame, all is not lost! This two year course has been proven to convert clinical defectives into near defectives in the majority of cases, and if you work hard you may even be able to spend the rest of your lives tending to the cricket farms as menial class-eight labourers.” Ms Humple casually drew what looked like a thin, arm-length reed from her sleeve and bent it in her hands. It made a sizzling, hissing noise against her palms. “Unfortunately, due to the fact you’re a pack of dull-headed thickies, this means that the methods I must employ have to be…old fashioned.” She wasn’t smiling anymore as she looked between her students in challenge. “Today will be the beginning of your education. Are there any questions before first period?”

  Tuesday put his hand up. Ms Humple seemed pleased by his insight.

  “Tuesday?”

  “Is there a Mister Humple?”

  Everything stopped. All the kids froze, Ms Humple ceased breathing, and the guinea pig stopped running on his little wheel. Everyone was silently looking at Tuesday (or at least indicating their neck stumps or cerebrum in his general direction). Tuesday gradually shrank down a centimetre at a time until his nose was resting on the edge of his desk.

  “What did you say?” Ms Humple’s fury boiled and seethed behind the surface of her purple face as she ground out her words.

  “I-”

  “Principal Hurrage now, Tuesday! You cannot proposition your teacher!”

  “What’s a Prin-”

  Ms Humple’s sizzling acid cane whipped through the air and snapped down on Tuesday's hand. The fact it was known as an “acid cane” kind of tells you everything you need to know about how it felt. Letting out a cry and shaking his stinging, crackling fingers, Tuesday copped a second burning lash dangerously close to his left eye.

  “Hey!”

  When a third cut got him squarely on his exposed calf muscle Tuesday jumped to his feet so he could become a harder target, but then a fourth precise whack sent him staggering towards the door. Smacked repeatedly high and low until he was through the portal, Tuesday found himself out in that familiar greying corridor of peeling paint. The door slammed shut with a clang.

  Tuesday looked down at the extensive maze of red marks all over his exposed hands and forearms. I was like he’d been savaged by a cat with lightsabers for claws. Tuesday muttered darkly.

  “Bloody women. Insane, the lot of them…”

  Looking around the four-way intersection, Tuesday tried to orient himself. Behind him was
the classroom, directly ahead was the exit to the rest of Seven Suns, to the left was a clearly labelled unisex bathroom, and to the right was a door with a very shiny golden plaque with ornate lettering. Scratching at his eczema, leaving little flurries of dead skin in his wake, Tuesday guessed that door number four must be where he was meant to go, and he went in without knocking.

  The room that greeted him was typical of most government-funded establishments: the walls were a watery colour that Tuesday would call Institution Blue, the carpet was Blinding Orange, just like his uniform, and the only decorations were crude pictures that children had drawn for their sadistic Principal out of nappy-wetting fear. On the far side of a lesser-bureaucrat-sized desk was an egg-shaped man in a ratty suit who appeared to be asleep. Sitting down loudly in the only free chair, Tuesday snatched up a lasertip pen and started picking his teeth with the pointy end as the round man smoothly pretended that he’d been awake the whole time.

  “Don’t do that, you idiot.” Principal Hurrage’s extensive frog-mouth arced downwards in displeasure. “You’ll burn a hole out the back of your head.”

  Sneering at the oldest first grader in his career, the principal picked up his acid cane and bent it in a threatening way. It sizzled. Tuesday went to speak after a few seconds of silent staring, but the Principal gave a hand gesture to indicate that this would be unwise. Hurrage waited a couple more seconds before following up.

  “Tuesday, right?” Hurrage looked unimpressed as he regarded a local clock on the wall. Seeing as through it was a Seven Suns clock, it had three interlocked faces and ten different hands. “It’s barely into Second Afternoon! Your first class isn’t due to start for another three minutes. What did you do?”

  “Kinda asked out me teacher, all nice like.”

  Mister Hurrage twitched. “You asked out Ms Humple?”

  “Yer.”

  “Have you no sense, man? How could you possibly think that somebody as beautiful and elegant and refined as Ms Humple could even consider associating with a piece of criminal garbage like you?”

  Tuesday shrugged and put one foot on the principal's desk. He yawned and stretched, exposing the underside of at least a dozen rotten teeth as well as both hairy armpits, before answering.

  “Dunno. She knocked me back, I think.”

  The principal relaxed, but that facial expression had spoken volumes. After all, it was identical to that look Tuesday had seen on Travis Melchor’s mug. Tuesday could easily read that Principal Hurrage had been smitten with Ms Humple for ages, but he’d obviously had no luck whatsoever. Tuesday yelped, shaken from his thoughts, as Principal Hurrage’s acid cane snapped down on his foot.

  “Ow!”

  “Indeed,” the principal gave a toad-like smile as Tuesday clearly absorbed the message to keep his feet on the floor. “I am well aware of your unique situation, Tuesday. And if you’re planning to waste everybody’s time for the next two years purely so you can get away with what you did, you’ll…you’ll…well, you’ll…”

  Principal Hurrage seemed at a loss. After all, there were no prisons on this world, and they’d abolished the death penalty hundreds of years ago. Instead of completing his totally empty threat, Hurrage stood up, turned to face his only window, and linked his hands behind his back. This gave Tuesday the perfect opportunity to pull all manner of disgusting faces and to make suggestive gestures with his fingers.

  “You are already in The Reject Box, Mister Tuesday. I suggest that you use your extensive time here at Elementary to learn how to write your own name, rather than trying to pick up women that are way out of my league.”

  “Whose league?”

  “Your league! Way out of your league!” Mister Hurrage quickly clarified, turning the colour of a beetroot stain on a white napkin. He growled his next words. “Do you know how I became the Principal of this school?”

  “Picked the short straw?”

  “No!”

  “Failed all your tests? Shoplifting? Cow-tipping?”

  “Stop guessing!” Mister Hurrage roared. He composed himself with great effort. His maroon flesh gradually faded back into a mere glowing red. “I was once District Manager of all the protein reclamation plants on Cemetery Block Fifteen, but once I’d heard about an amazing opportunity to get paid for viciously lashing stupid children in a remedial school for dunderheads, I immediately decided to quit working in the field of cadaver processing and generously dedicated to myself to this…this worthy cause. Do you know the difference between you and me, Tuesday?”

  “Four chins. Ow!”

  The principal retracted his acid cane. “No. The difference between you and me, Tuesday, is that I have always diligently applied myself in my civic duty, even when I didn’t enjoy it. I understand what is expected of me, and I have an appreciation for how Seven Suns is an amazing machine made from billions of cogs, and that every one of them is essential to its operation. You, however, have a problem with rules, you have a problem with authority, and you have a problem with seeing beyond your own base, shallow, crude desires. But with the right attitude and dedication, you may still achieve the impossible. One day, Tuesday, you may be able to fill out your own name on an unemployment form without suffering a fatal brain aneurysm.” Mr Hurrage's chin tilted upwards. “Do you get me, Tuesday?”

  Tuesday scratched himself in two places at once.

  “Yes, Mister Hurrage.”

  “That's better. Get back to class. And leave Ms Humple alone.”

  Tuesday got to his feet, turned, sighed, and rolled his eyes all at the same time. Doing this in synchronisation took his entire limited reservoir of concentration, and gave him a mild headache.

  “Buh-bye.”

  “Behave, Tuesday.”

  *

  Except for the fact everything was painfully confusing and that he’d learned absolutely nothing whatsoever in any of the endlessly boring lessons, the rest of Tuesday’s first day at Elementary went pretty well. The clock continued to tick, the chalk continued to squeak, and before he knew it Tuesday had finished his first six-hour stint as a student.

  Still wearing his blindingly orange school uniform, Tuesday caught another free needle train all the way to the nearest cricket farm for his first after-school shift. An award-winning composer (with a dozen drunk & disorderly charges on his record) ushered Tuesday through a triple-sealed portal and into a hissing clean room. Swapping his gaudy tracksuit for thick kevlar gloves, a protective apron and a hairnet, Tuesday was immediately hustled through a second clean room in another burst of antiseptic steam.

  Grumbling at being hurried, Tuesday soon found himself in a long, long aisle made from millions of glistening brown slabs. Dead ahead, the corridor rolled off into the distance as far as his eyesight could reach. Looking up, the moist surfaces to his left and right loomed so high into the sky that Tuesday could almost make out clouds wrapping around the upper levels. A perfectly symmetrical lattice of thin black pipes was traced over the unusual slabs, and sank into the wall every couple of feet. What the walls were made from was a mystery. Just like the rest of this stupid planet, everything was brightly lit and devoid of shadows.

  The civil service supervisor was rattling off something boring, but Tuesday wasn't paying attention. Reaching towards the nearest wall, Tuesday lightly touched one of the mysterious bricks with a finger. Startling as the surface shuddered and rippled in response, Tuesday realised that the brown slabs were living creatures that had been perfectly stacked like Tetris bricks. It must have been the biggest game of piggyback in the entire galaxy.

  Angry that he hadn't been warned about this weirdness in advance, Tuesday complained to the civil service supervisor. Enraged, the red-faced labourer roared that he'd already explained everything on three separate occasions by this point, and that it wasn't his fault if Tuesday had the attention span of a brain-damaged goldfish. Realising that he had a potential death-by-misadventure case on his hands here, from this point on the civil service supervisor was sure to speak
v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y in the hopes that Tuesday wouldn't end up head-first in a flesh mulcher or something on his first day.

  Tuesday's fourth round of orientation only went for a couple of minutes, as just about everything in this mega-abattoir – from the self-cleaning perspex walkways to the killfloor bladepits - was automated. One thing he wasn't told was that this farm didn't actually need any human interaction to operate, and it was nothing more than busywork for criminals and thickies.

  Tuesday's main job was to make sure the Cricket Chow valves opened all the way at feeding time, and to check that none of the black pipes were gummed up. Mercifully, the so-called “crickets” they cropped in this farm of horrors were eerily silent due to the fact they had no heads, limbs or wings, and after decades of extensive engineering the crickets had a lot more in common with giant living steaks than insects. It was hard to feel bad about eating something that was literally nothing more than unthinking meat.